


Susan

by worddancer



Series: Wicked Girls [5]
Category: Chronicles of Narnia (Movies), Chronicles of Narnia - All Media Types, Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: Character Study, Gods, Growing Up, Meddling Gods, She wasn't Aslans toy, Susan Deserved Better, being queen, feminist character study, once a king or queen of Narnia, wicked girls- seanan mcguire
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-18
Updated: 2016-10-18
Packaged: 2018-08-23 04:46:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8314426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/worddancer/pseuds/worddancer
Summary: “Happy endings are a bit overrated aren’t they?” She asked one day. “The wolf eats the little girl, the witch pushes the children into the oven. The lion exiles the queen. Happy endings are pleasent fantasies to help children sleep at night. Real life is messy, it’s dirty and most of the time it hurts and we cling to the brief moments of joy and tell ourselves that those moments make it all worth it. Growing up is nothing more than learning to lie to yourself so well you start to believe in fairy stories again.”





	

**Author's Note:**

> Fourth in my series of character studies. As any one who has read my pieces on Susan know I have a lot of feelings about how she was treated. AKA fuck CS Lewis. In this one I looked at being a pawn in someone elses game and deciding not to play anymore.

_ Susan and Lucy were Queens and they ruled well and proudly  _

_ And they honored their Lord and their Land and rang the bell long and loudly _

_ And they never once asked to go back to their lives  _

_ To be children and chattel and mothers and wives _

_ But the land cast them out in a lesson that only one learned.  _

_ And one Queen said “I’m not a toy” and never returned _

 

When Susan returned from Narnia the first time it took her those final three months in the country to stop using the royal “we”. The centaurs who taught her politics and the badgers who taught her history taught her well. Susan had been a “we” since she was twelve years old the first time. A queen cannot exist independently of her country. A queen has not self before her country. 

Susan never learned how to be JUST Susan. She was the oldest, the responsible, the gentle, the queen but never Susan. Queens are queens before they are people. They bind their hopes, souls, bones and blood into their countries. Queens who are people before they are queens become Jadis. They become cruel. 

Queens never put themselves before their country not if they want their countries to survive.

“Happy endings are a bit overrated aren’t they?” She asked one day. “The wolf eats the little girl, the witch pushes the children into the oven. The lion exiles the queen. Happy endings are pleasent fantasies to help children sleep at night. Real life is messy, it’s dirty and most of the time it hurts and we cling to the brief moments of joy and tell ourselves that those moments make it all worth it. Growing up is nothing more than learning to lie to yourself so well you start to believe in fairy stories again.”

But Susan grew up in a world made of fairy stories. She ruled her people well. She stood by her family and gave herself to a country she’d been promised too. She left her mother and father in one war torn country in order to build a new one. She was proud of the life and the world she’d help grow.  

The first years she missed her parents and England in a way the others didn’t. Peter was the closest but he was on a grand adventure here instead of being sent away from a war he was old enough to believe in but too young to fight in. Edmund threw himself into atoning for wanting to be noticed, to be valued, to be looked up upon that he worked himself near sick. Lucy was so young that after the first year or so it seemed that she’d been Narnia born and not just Narnia raised. 

Susan remembered though. She remembered her mother kissing her forehead and telling her to be brave. In this world she was gentle. 

Gentle is it’s own kind of bravery. 

Susan knew what she and her siblings built. She saw how their land grew and prospered. She saw how Aslan was praised- even if he didn’t walk among them again. She missed her parents but she never wanted to leave.    


She never asked to go back. 

She remembered England. The girls only a few years older than her whispering about boys and weddings. A woman in England had no choices. She was a child, a wife and a mother. Never her own. Susan wasn’t her own in Narnia either but she had her own power. She had a measure of control.

Or did she?   


Susan didn’t stop believing in fairy stories until she became a child a second time. 

Or she believed in the creatures, the lions, the witches and the animals that talked but she didn’t believe in happy endings anymore.

Given the choice Susan would have chained her flesh and bones to the country that demanded her but she was never given that choice. She was taken away, brought back and taken away again.

By the time Susan turned 21 for the second time she slept spread eagle on the bed, her fingers reaching toward each side. She spent her entire second childhood being told to be less, to take up less space to make less noise, to make less trouble. Susan had never been able to be less, not in any world. Not even in this world she had been damned too. 

She didn’t try to go back anymore though. She spent that first damnable year trying to return before a damn Lion brought her back. He used her again. She refused to be used a third time. 

“I’m not a toy in your game. You took us away from our country and damned our people to years of slaughter and death. I won’t take part in that anymore.”

“What’s a pretty girl like you doing here?” people asked her when she walked down the streets at night, a dagger tucked into her skirt. After the assassination attempt the first time she was 17 she never went unarmed. Even in her second childhood.

“What’s a pretty girl like you doing here?” people asked her when she worked as a nurse in the front lines. She looked down at her blood stained hands and her blood stained apron and realized this was the most she felt at home since she returned the second time.

“What’s a pretty girl like you doing here?” people asked.

She knew why people asked her. She knew what they saw. She knew that they thought that pretty, that gentle, that kind meant she wouldn’t fight to protect what’s hers or herself. How little did they know. Susan spent her first childhood learning to fight for everyone else. She spent her second childhood learning to fight for herself. 

That might have been a problem. 

You can’t be a pawn when you’ve been raised a queen.

_ There are three things all wise men fear, the sea in a storm, the night with no moon and the anger of a gentle man.  _


End file.
